The Terror of Passion
by Nariel Seregon
Summary: This story is about a young girl named Haruhi and her friends that are in Stroudsburg High School during a day that was going along just fine until a dead body shows up. Things turn for the worst when Haruhi recieves a disturbing message...random, violenc


The Terror of Passion

Okay, this is going to be a story that will have an R. L. Stine...ish feel to it (been reading too much, obviously)

This story is about a young girl named Haruhi and her friends that are in Stroudsburg High School during a day that was going along just fine, like it usually did, until someone finds the impaled body of a student hidden somewhere in the bushes. Soon enough, the school has turned into a nightmare of its own as anonymous text messages started to appear on the cell phones of the students that found the body threatening that if they went to the police, they would meet the same fate. But things turn for the worst when Haruhi recieves a message that doesn't involve having the same fate if she told, but one even more disturbing it would cause her and her friends to flee the school in fear that the suspect was there. But what they would find out would change their lives.........forever.

Note: Me, Aubree Riend, as the author, must warn anyone who reads this that I may stray from the actual plot line for a chapter (or two), then I will go back to the plot line in the next chapters. Thank you, and enjoy the book!

Now on with the story!

Prologue

"Hey, guys...I think that we should be leaving...." I said as I looked around the dark parking lot of the mall that we were in earlier. I was with a lot of my friends, Sammy, Carrie Mae, Kirby, Jessica, Ashley, Alissa, Celeste, Rogue, Karen, Natalie, Danielle, and Dawn. Dante was grounded, so he couldn't make it.

Sammy just laughed at what I said, then sighed and said, "Yeah, we'd better get...............did you hear that?"

I blinked and looked around and Jessica did the same, looking left, right, behind her and in front of her.

However, Sammy had heard something, what sounded like shuffling footsteps that were inching closer towards us, but we dismissed that and continued talking.

As time went by and no car came to pick us up, we all decided to walk home. Mind you, that was easier said than done, since it was more than 5 miles until we got HALFWAY to my house, and the fact that is was really dark now did not help us at all. We all thanked heaven that Kirby had a flashlight, since she was the brains of our group after all.

I yawned, mainly out of boredom, adjusting my glasses, which were old temporary specs, with my middle finger as I was thinking about where my mother and grandmother were when a car came swerving from around the corner, almost hitting us as we screamed and tripped over trying to get out of the way.

Carrie Mae fell into a HUGE pile of leaves and disappeared for a second before coming back up. The sight of her "crown of leaves" made us start to laugh insanely.

Then, something weird happened, something that I couldn't grasp at first. There were footsteps, fast and brisk coming towards us. The longer we stayed there, the faster the footsteps became before we realized that the person who owned the feet were running at us.

"RUN!" Jess shrieked, and we all got up and practically sprinted away from the figure, but the figure must have been pretty athletic to reach us since it (we didn't know the gender at the time) was about 25-30 feet away from us. As the figure got closer, we put on a last burst of speed, hoping to get away, but it was too late.

I heard Carrie Mae scream, Sammy yell something, and then felt my own mouth forming words before I felt something at the back of my head. The everything went black..........

Chapter One: How It All Began...

_2 Days Earlier at 7:30AM_

I sighed in disappiontment, listening to the morning announcements in homeroom as the announcer stated that there were no longer any calzones during the school lunches.

Mrs. Renah, my homeroom teacher, was taking attendance like usual when she stared at something, then gasped a little.

"What wrong, Mrs. Renah?" I asked, walking over to her desk and looking over at the list of names of the students that were in homeroom.

"David Oluna is absent today, and is never absent! I wonder what happened..." she started to tell me, but her voice trailed off, then she resumed calling out names, leaving me to wonder what HAD happened to him.

Before I could really get into this, however, the homeroom bell rang and I walked out and headed to Geometry with Mr. Inekita.

As I was walking to Modular Classroom 21 where my class was, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. There was something hidden behind a few bushes, but I put investigating out of my head for the time being to get my first two classes started. As I walked in, Mr. Inekita walked over to me and stopped at me desk.

"Did you see something hidden in the bushes before you got here?" I heard him ask, and as I looked up at him, I almost fell out of my chair as I realized that his sea green eyes and pale, smooth face was about 5 inches away from mine, and that was close!

I steadied myself quickly, though, and said that I did, but I wasn't going to check it out until my 2nd Period class was over.

He agreed that that was a good idea and as he turned to go back to his desk, I noted that his straight, shoulder-length brown hair turned an almost golden color in the light.

Call me crazy, but I had developed a small crush on him, ever since the minute that I set foot into the classroom as a new student from another school and he introduced me to the class.

As we copied down a couple of notes from a PowerPoint that he had set up, one girl sent me a note that said, 'So, I guess that you saw what was behind the bushes?' I wrote her one back that said 'No, but I will find out once 2nd period ends.' She just nodded and went back to writing, and I did the same.

As the bell rang, Mr. Inekita congradulated us for a peaceful class and, before I left the class, patted me on the head making me blush and walk out the door. I was still so out of it after that that I ran right smack into the door to my 2nd period class, Applied Comm. 11 with Mr. Shanton. After actually opening it, I walked in and sat down at my desk, feeling the bump on my forehead and wincing a little.

Mr. Shanton told us that we would be reading a book series called "Fear Street" by R. L. Stine. A lot of the students, excluding me and my best friend Jessica, groaned and a couple of girls complained about it being too scary.

As for Jess and I, we loved the series of murder mysteries, so we asked which one we would be reading today, and he told us that it would be "Fear Street: Dead End". After that was said, it took about half of our energy not to scream for joy.

After the class ended, I walked out and, instead of going inside like I usually did, I went to inspect the bushes. The thing that I saw had been moved, so It was going to take me a while to find out where it went, but I was determined to find out. I did notice what looked like part of the school's polo, the maroon one, was caught on a root of a tree closer to the school, and wondered why it was over there.

Another one of my friends, Ashley, came over and began helping me with the search since she saw it too. It was well halfway into 3rd period when I saw something hidden behind more bushes close to the Modular Classroom 7 where my World History class with Mrs. Yerany was being taught. As I peeked throught the bushes, my heart felt like it stopped and I gave a blood-curdling scream that scared Ashley and probably the students in the other classes around the area, but I couldn't think about that.

The reason was that behind the bushes, there was a pair of blank, gray eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky and at anyone who saw them.

It was David Oluna, lying there with an iron pole shoved right through his chest and blood everywhere.

He was dead.

Chapter Two: The Threat Was Established

He was dead..._he was dead...__**he was dead!**_ My mind kept screaming the obvious at me as I tried to tell myself that it was fake, a horrible practical joke that someone had played. The longer I kept staring at the body, however, the more frighteningly real it became. Back inside the school, his death was annouced for what seemed like the whole world to hear, and throughout every class, there were gasps, moans, even a scream or two could be heard.

David's girlfriend, Crissy, tried to commit suicide to get attention for herself, but someone was able to stop her and tell her that David wouldn't want her to end her own life just because he was gone, and she finally calmed down and agreed.

Now there was only one more question to ask: who killed David Oluna? I put my finger to my lips and thought as people in uniforms slowly moved the body, and I was guessing that they were from the Crime Lab. Hopefully, the unidentified suspect left them some finger prints on the iron pole...that is, if they weren't wearing gloves at the time that David was killed or if they wiped everything down clean. As you could probably tell, I have always wanted to be a detective like my idol, Nancy Drew or L from Death Note, and sometimes people even told me that I looked like her with shorter hair and thet I looked like him but...female. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts when the bell to end 5th period rang, and I headed to lunch with a stomach that did flip-flops.

For my lunch that day, I grabbed a tray, picking out a can of Iced Tea: Green Apple from the cooler closet, then stood in that hell of a line to get the pizza dippers that they had for lunch, muttering small curses that seemed to disappear the second they came out of my mouth. I finally got to the register and grabbed a bag of Baked Lays and a package of Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, paid for it with a $20 (it will stay in my account for the next few days), and started walking to the table that held my friends Ashley, Rogue, and Celeste. As I neared the table, I caught a glimpse of my old crush Vincent and kept my focus at my table, boredly running my fingers through my short, brown hair. I have a tendancy of going out of crushes once I find out that they either have girlfriends already or don't know that I exist.

I bet that the former and latter were both in affect at this time.

I sighed and sat down, and Rogue stood up.

"Are you leaving already? Why are you leaving when I just got here?" I asked her, mocking being hurt but she just laughed.

"No, no...Celeste, can you move your chair in for a moment?" She said with a devil's smile that made me gulp.

_Just like someone I remember from Japan..._I thought, dreading what was coming next, and sure enough...

Celeste nodded and scooted in, and the next thing that I knew, my chair (along with me in it) was being dragged to the lunch aisle.

"Meep! Hey! Let go of my chair!" I said as I quickly grabbed the table and held on fast while Rogue, like usual, was trying to drag me next to Vincent. I kept yelling at her that I didn't have a crush on him anymore. A couple of people who were watching that little show chuckled and giggled, since that happened almost every single day. She finally gave up her attempt of dragging me, so I went back to where I was before and continued eating.

I was bored, so I started to stare around when I saw something peculiar.

Vincent wasn't talking to his friends, but instead was looking over at my table. Well, we DID make a scene with me yelling and Rogue tugging at my chair, but wouldn't he have gone back to his conversation by then? As if on some sort of cue, he turned away and begame talking to another friend of his as I did the same, getting bored of sitting sideways on the chair and began talking to Ashley about what anime she had recently watched.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I was an anime, book, and video game freak?

"Anyway," I said, stealing a perogie from Ashley's tray and dipping it into some catsup, "they still haven't got any leads on who could've killed David..."

Ashley looked up at me, probably shocked at the news or me snatching a perogie, but she had those wide eyes that you would find in a horror film.

Rogue was saying, "Well, they'd better find something soon! I just got a text message from some restricted number. Check this out!" She handed me her cell phone and I flipped it open and pressed a few buttons to get to her recent messages.

Ashley walked around the table to my side as Celeste joined us, both looking over my shoulder to see what it said. We all gasped as we read the contents of the message. It said:

I know that you saw the body. I watched you.

If you go to the police, you will end up just like him.

I am not joking. Someone already tried.

He is dead. And if you value your life...

Just shut up.

Forever.

By the time we stopped reading, Jessica had joined us and said that she had recieved the same message, making us all jump up at her sudden appearance.

I shook my head and stared out the window, then I blinked and started walking towards it, spying something. As I neared it with my friends all behind me, I put a hand to my mouth to stifle a scream.

Erick Jomason was on the ground in plain sight, dark blood pooling around him, staining the green grass under him. I knew then that the person sending the messages wasn't joking around. Just a little while before, Erick was talking to us about going to the police, then he left the lunch room and that was when Rogue had gotten the message.

Erick was obviously dead, and as we stared at him a little longer, we saw the long iron pole that was in David's chest protruding out of Erick's.

Chapter Three: Stalked Through IM

_8:00PM at Haruhi's house_

I scratched the back of my head after doing my homework, walking to my room with a bag of pretzels in my hand and a glass of Pepsi in the other. I had to be careful of where I stepped, since my room wasn't the cleanest, and I finally put my stuff down on my computer desk and logged onto Myspace IM to see who was online. Of all my friends, MahoGanii (Ashley), Karuu-chan (Alissa), Rouge (Elizabeth), and NaturalTypeHostClub...well, that was myself. I started to chat with them, feeling bored.

**MahoGanii: **Hey! How r u?

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Neh, I'm okay. What about you guys?

**Karuu-chan: **I'm fine...brb phone

**RougeRogue: **I'm good, just snatched a ring from the store

**NaturalTypeHostClub:** Again? Haha......oh, hold on, I have a private IM

**Karuu-chan:** Okay, and back

I minimized the main chat and opened the other window to find someone's sn called EmoKISS ans decided to start the conversation.

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Hey...?

**EmoKISS: **I know who you are...

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **You do?

**EmoKISS:** Yes.

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Then who am I and what am I wearing?

**EmoKISS: **You are Aubree and you are wearing a blue baggy Treasure Planet t-shirt with unmatching green cammo sweatpants

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **H-how did you...?

**EmoKISS: **I know...that you are the first one to find the two boys' bodies.....

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **What? Who are you?!

**EmoKISS: **Not telling. Now, I will tell you this...

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **I'm waiting...

**EmoKISS: **Watch out tomorrow. You and your friends know too much already, and that makes you in danger. And if you say anything to the police, we'll kill you. Goodbye.

I was staring at the window as he logged off just like that, feeling scared and vunerable. How did he know what I was wearing? Unless...he was watching me at the very moment! At that though, I looked around frantically, hoping to catch a glimpse of a figure in the window, but no such luck. I opened the main chat finally and continued.

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Back and more scared than ever!

**RougeRogue: **What happened? Tell us.

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Well, I got this private IM, right?

**LittleCheetahGirl: **Right. Then what else?

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **Well, the person told me that he/she knows who we are!

**Karuu-chan: ** WHAT??!!

**NaturalTypeHostClub: **I know! Oh, I have to go, gotta get ready for tomorrow and all that jazz. I hope that tomorrow will be normal...for once...

After everyone typed goodbye (and good luck), I logged off and went to bed...or at least, I tried to. I had the worst nightmares that I kept waking up about every 3 hours, but I finally fell asleep by playing "Won't Go Home Without You" by Maroon 5 on my radio/CD player.

I finally woke up and trudged to my bus stop, feeling too tired to run or do anything at that moment. As the bus rolled up, I walked on and made my way to the back where Alissa sat and she moved so that I could sit by the window. I stared out the window, becoming drowzy and soon I was sleeping away, and Alissa was telling one of the people in front of us that I had a rough night. I woke up 5 minutes later when we pulled into the school parking lot and yawned, feeling more awake than I felt when I got onto the bus.

Alissa and I started to talk about the text messages that we recieved and a couple of other people, including this one kid Justin, started to join in, saying that they got the same one. We walked out and were walking to the school doors when Alissa's cell phone went off, telling her that she had a text message. As I looked over, we both read an alarming message:

I see you. You both are in danger.

And it is not good when...

I see my prey right before my very eyes.

But that is not what this message is about.

Another student dead.

Another worry about my identity gone.

We both stared at the message for a moment before Jessica ran over to us in a panic.

"What's wrong, Jess?" I asked, since she looked VERY out of breath.

She said in a shaking voice, "It's...it's Timmy Hisco! He's been found dead at the flag pole!"

"WHAT!!??" Alissa and I both yelled, then we ran with Jess to the flag pole, and sure enough there he was, but this time it was different.

Timmy was dead, the we could guess, but he didn't have an iron pole in his chest. There was a rope around his neck and he was hanging from the flag pole, blood slowly sliding down the pole, but there was something about this that scared us silly. His body was at the base of the flag pole while his head and neck were at the top.

_He had been beheaded, and his body had been mutilated into a disgusting mass of blood, bone, and clothing shreds. The blood was still pooling around him despite him being dead and some of his bones were scattered around the base of the flag pole like a sick ritual. A sick ritual that started with a human sacrafice and ended with finding another..._

Chapter Four: Reality At Its Worst

_4:00PM at Haruhi's house_

Everyone was at my house after we found out that school would be shut down for a long time while the FBI searched for the killer. Another one of my friends, Ruth, was there too since she came right when we found the body of Timmy. I now was trying to figure out why that first three victims were guys when Ruth spoke.

"So..........who else was murdered?" Her voice was being forced to be calm as she was sitting in one of my bean bag chairs, the green one. After asking that, she took a sip of the glass of Pepsi that she had, trying to get her mind off of what she saw.

"David Oluna and Erick Jomason," I simply stated, sitting in my bright-green-and-black egg chair and looking up vampires on my computer, chewing on some sour gummi worms while doing so. Did I forget to mention that I was blunt? Since the computer was being slow, I turned the chair around and curled into a cozy ball, looking around at Jess, Rogue, Marie, Ashley, Alissa, Ruth, and Sammy as they all sat in different areas of my room, doing different things.

Sammy was on her PSP, Rogue was chewing on some crackers that she snuck from the drug store that we were at before, Ashley was looking through my Ipod, Alissa was drawing something, Ruth was watching me type down stuff, and Jess was talking with Marie about nothing in particular.

"How about we go to the mall in a little while? Maybe that can take our minds off of some things for a little while!" Ashley said, trying to sound cheerful, but that was a half hearted attempt. However, it did get us to think for a little bit, and finally we agreed and got ready to go. The we left the house and walked there.

When we finally got there, we were suddenly glad that we didn't try to get my parents to drive us there. There were no places to park at all, since it looked like the whole school decided to take cover in the air conditioning, and that included us. It was extremely hot out, despite the clouds that blocked out the sun, so we hurried in and started at the stand at the front entrance, grabbing some cold sodas for ourselves.

I yawned as we made out way to the food court, muttering, "Should've gotten more sleep..."

Sammy chuckled as we sat down, bringing some chairs over from neighboring tables for the rest.

That's when I looked up and saw them, sitting at the farthest table, away from us. There were three of them, one guy was big and muscular with short curly hair. He was wearing a gray hoodie with faded out jeans that were ripped at the knees and bottoms. Another guy was more boyish than the first one as he had untidy bronze hair and was slightly muscular, wearing a light blue jacket with a white long-sleeved turtleneck underneath, and his jeans were slightly faded. The last guy, however, was the one that caught -and held- my attention.

He was sitting in a chair that faced toward me, but he wasn't really looking anywhere. He had shoulder-length honey blonde hair and his skin was a beautiful pale color. Truth be told, he was more beautiful than any female models that I know of, and he was a guy! His eyes, when I looked closer, were black and he was wearing a tan leather jacket with a white button down shirt, and he was also wearing tan pants.

I looked away, a little nervous since I hated to have someone catch me staring at them, and took a sip of the Coca Cola that I got when we came in, staring down at the pizza that I purchased for lunch for the moment.

"Who were you staring at, Haruhi?" Rogue asked, looking over to where I was a moment ago.

I was tempted to push her face down into her Chinese food to stop her from getting caught, but it was too late.

They did see us......well, the boyish one and the honey-blonde one noticed. They both looked up to see me trying to pull Rogue's face away, their eyes just showing mild curiosity, but then they gave a strange glare that made me and even Rogue look away, shuddering involuntarily.

After lunch, we headed to FYE to listen to some music samples and play the demo games.

Sammy was playing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer demo, Alissa was watching her, Ruth was looking at the different games that they had, Rogue was opposite of Ruth and was looking at more games and probably thinking about how she could snatch some candy for later, Ashley was looking at the rock/pop music section, Jess was checking out the heavy metal section for something to do, Marie was laughing at something that Sammy said and did on the game, and I was listening to the soundtrack of an anime called Fruits Basket, humming along to the songs.

"HARUHIIIII!!!"

I looked up to see a figure launching itself at me.

Carrie Mae dragged me down to the floor in a bone-crushing hug as my arms flailed around and the others laughing at the funny scene.

The next one to be taken was Jess, and she was brought down by Yosie, another one of my friends from school.

"What was that for?" Jess asked as she got up, rubbing her butt since she fell on it.

"I missed you!" Yosie replied simply.

"You didn't need to miss us that much!"

"Well, too late, I already did!"

I knocked them both in the heads once and that shut them up and told everyone that I was going to be in the back where the animes were. As I walked there, I was wondering if reality was distorting since I saw someone that I thought I recognized, but I put that out of my mind until I heard a scaringly familiar voice...

"HAAAARUUUUHIIIIIIII!!!"

I squeaked as Tamaki Suoh latched onto me, appearing out of...who knows where, and Takashi Morinozuka (Mori), Mitsukuni Haninozuka (Hunny), Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, and Kyouya Ohtori came walking up behind him, smiling at me brightly. I could tell that they missed me, especially Tamaki and Hunny.

"Tamaki-senpai, get off! We're in the middle of a store, stop acting like a little kid!!!" I yelled, trying to pry him off of me.

"..."

He went into his little 'emo corner', and I just sighed, using my index finger and thumb (since this wasn't an anime) to create an animesweatdrop that slid down the side of my head.

"T-Tamaki-senpai...I'm sorry, but we _**are**_ in public..."

"That is okay, dear Haruhi!" Tamaki jumped up, suprising my friends at how quickly he recovered from my bluntness, then looked around with sparkles in his eyes, "Is this the mall of the commoners!?"

"Er...yeah...this is the American commoner mall, actually, so there are different stuff here than Japan...see, this is something that they call a starfruit," I held up a small, greenish-yellow fruit that was the shape of a...well, a star, obviously, and I continued, "It's a little on the tart side, but it's very sweet when it's ripe!"

"So, is it ripe now?" Hikaru and Kaoru asked at the same time, and I shook my head.

"No, but it's halfway there."

"Awwwwww, Haruhi, you are sooooo cute when you know stuff that we don't!" Tamaki pointed out, then he proceeded to spin me around in circles, maing me dizzy.

"Ack, stop! Mori-senpai, HELP ME!!!" I almost shrieked, reaching out with the part of my arms that I could use.

Mori simply walked over and lifted me out of Tamaki's arms, placing me afterwards on his shoulder so that it looked like I was an overgrown parrot. I giggled to myself a little at that thought, but then blinked when Mori offered me a cracker.

After they went away and we walked out, we split up. Sammy was going with Carrie Mae to Rockin' Willie's, the others were going clothes shopping, and Rogue went with me. As I thought, she stole some sour candies and gave me the Warheads Double Drops. We got the game Rock Band from FYE and couldn't wait to play Japanese songs on it. We wouldn't sing the songs, however, for we didn't know half of what they mean.


End file.
